Holy and Not So Holy Families

At last
the holidays are over. I can step away
from entertaining and get back to reading, writing, and prayer.

But Christmas
is a family holiday, which the Feast of the Holy Family naturally follows—in
more ways than one.

On the one
hand, Christmas is about Jesus being born into a holy family. On the other hand, we celebrate that feast in
our own, less than holy families.

I count
myself blessed that, for all my family’s challenges, I look forward to being
with my family at Christmas. But I
notice, every year more, how family struggles bring misery to many people’s
Christmases.

***

We
idealize Christmas as a magical time, families gathered around the tree and
around the table, giving wonderful gifts and basking in the light of tree and
candles. And that’s partly true. But, just because it should be a magical
time, it’s also a time where we notice all the ways our imperfect families spoil
the magic: forgetting what others really want, from gifts or from time together;
sinking into selfishness where we should be basking in love.

As my
children get older, I appreciate the failures of parents. The future Pope John Paul II, as a young
priest, wrote a play called “The Radiation of Fatherhood.” I don’t know anything about it beyond the
name, but that name is a wonderful idea.
I am called to share in God’s Fatherhood, to teach my children what it
means to be loved, what it means to be receptive before a benevolent and
powerful parent, what it means to receive gifts in the deepest sense. How wonderful to radiate fatherhood!

But, just
because it is wonderful, how awful that we fail at it. How awful that at Christmas I, and every
other parent, am too often tired, or impatient with my children’s glee or weakness,
or just want to be left alone.

At Christmas
we realize the scars that we all bear, of parents who have not always radiated
the glory of God’s fatherhood.

***

Call this
the second wound.

Our first and
deepest wound is Original Sin. Original
Sin isn’t something attached to our souls—it is a lack. Our first parents received from God a
fabulous grace, that both united them to God (grace elevates) and held them in unity
within themselves (grace heals), so that, among other things, their appetites and
desires helped them live a happy life, instead of leading them to misery.

Our first parents
also received the ability to hand this gift on to their children, so that we
too would live that unity. Instead, they
squandered it. Their selfishness broke
their union with God, broke their unity within themselves—and withheld that gift
of unity from us, so that we are born to struggle instead of to peace. Original sin is a wound deep within
ourselves, a lack of grace that can only be healed by God’s grace. That is the first wound.

But the
second wound follows closely. Just as Original
Sin wounds us from within, so our parents wound us from without—and what a horror,
as a parent, to realize that we pass these wounds on to our children. I’d like to think that my children are
receiving from me all the gifts that will make their lives perfect and happy—and,
to be fair, our parents gave us, and we give to our children, many gifts. But wounds, too. We are all screwed up by our screwed-up
parents, and we’re all screwing up our children.

A favorite
Christian poet names both sides: “I’ll carry the songs we learned when we were
kids. I’ll carry the scars of
generations gone by.” Our personalities begin
as that mash of beauty and scars, both handed down by our parents. That is the family celebration of Christmas.

***

But at
Christmas, Jesus enters into the family.
The real magic is not our perfect Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, or
Christmas dinner. The real magic is that
God has not abandoned us to ourselves.

We come to
the creche not as the bearers of gifts, but as the bearers of wounds. We come to Christmas not as those who make
things magical, but as those who know we need a Savior. The only gifts we can pass on are those we
receive from him. (How magical that the
Magi came to the Savior King only because he was already at work in their hearts. Our desire to serve him is itself his gift.) The only songs worth singing are the ones
that come from him and point us back to him.
The only songs worth singing are the ones that acknowledge our scars,
and bare them to his healing balm.

The Holy
Family is holy because Jesus is there.
He radiates his love into the heart of Mary; she loves him because he
loved her first. The lesson of the Holy Family
is not that our families should be perfect, nor less that they automatically
are. The lesson is that grace heals and
elevates, and that the only way to make our families holy is to draw near to
the Savior.

Somewhere
in there is his poverty, with nothing but dirty hay for his bed, and letting
himself be treated like food for beasts.
May you take with you from this Christmas that poverty, with Jesus at
the center.